But my brother-in-law, who worked tirelessly — and a wee bit obsessively — to turn my newly bought cheap used car into something worth several times what I paid for it mentioned something I might consider trying on my old and yellowed headlight covers. And since he's spent hours fixing, tightening, or replacing most of the innards of my car for me, I figured I should take some initiative and do something that was supposed to take about 10 minutes. Because that's the kind of self-sacrificing guy I am.

Of course, me being me it took me about 25 minutes, but I didn't actually set fire to anything so I consider it a win.

Crystal View's Headlight Restorer actually freaking works. For about $20 (average retail price around my area) you get some sandpaper, some polishing cloths, some packets of polish and some packets of sealer and in about 5-10 minutes per headlight you get non-yellow, clear headlights. To the right is my car, before and then about a half hour after.

That's it. Not selling it, don't get commissions, and you'll get nothing extra If You Call Now. But if you've heard of this (or similar) stuff and was wondering if it worked, just wanted to let you know it does. Easily.

High point: finding out with an hour to spare that I would get to do a phone interview with Joss Whedon. All I really remember was that I was focusing on not sounding like a doofus, my painful discovery that it's a big, big mistake to pound down a large Sprite to calm your nerves when you're afraid to leave the phone long enough to pee, and that when he did call and we talked I sounded like a doofus.

With luck it'll appear online Tuesday and in the paper later in the week. Only really new thing in it that I haven't seen anywhere else: the Dr. Horrible episodes will appear on drhorrible.com pretty close to 12:01 am on their launch dates. Didn't get if it was PST, I'm hoping to hear back about that. My favorite quote was when I was asking about his knack for attracting obsessive fans:

"That’s what I am, that’s what I grew up as. The things I love, I love very hard."

Low point: immediately thereafter, when my car blew a head gasket on the way home and my brother-in-law and I spent four fun-filled hours next to Beville Road trying Bars Head Gasket Fix in the desperate hope that mine had blown in just the right way for this to work and save me many hundreds or thousands of dollars that I don't, strictly speaking, have.

Results: I have an interview which I have now transcribed and will tomorrow edit, modulate, and possibly remaster until I sound like David Attenborough, am now working on my article. Car is running well if not smoothly, the oil has been changed, and we'll see how that goes.

All in all, best thing about the weekend? Watching the little videos Teres took of the concert with our camera, where her fangirl shrieks can plainly be heard over the din. She's been blushing nonstop, I'm working on making one of them my Windows startup noise.

Trading in a car, for me, would be an exercise in futility, and I hate exercise. I shed them instead, casting them aside only after I’ve wrung every last ounce of usefulness out of them. Something like a hermit crab whose previous home started smoking and stalling at stoplights.

I’ve rarely stuck with a specific type of vehicle; when you buy based on an immediate need and whatever’s in your pocket by looking over the ads while sitting in your half-ton, still-pinging paperweight, the choice of make, model, or color rarely enters into your figuring. A wheel on at least three corners and some way to make it go and stop more or less on demand would be the high bar, with anything else an optional extra.

On the plus side, I almost always get more from my cars than even their manufacturers thought possible.

Who says you need 4-wheel drive to get up a 40-degree incline? You just need speed, determination, a complete lack of sense or personal safety, and an ’82 Chevette. I regularly drove through hip-high waves on the beach without getting stuck, smacked a shopping cart head-on at 60 mph on John Anderson (self-defense), drove backwards through neighborhoods to see if it would bring my odometer down, and my Chevette took it all with a smile and surprisingly little fluid. I added “FUMES” under the “E” on my gas gauge with Letraset letters and the needle could drop to the “U” before I got concerned. I think it actually managed to strain nutrients from the air.

After a completely necessary collision with a garbage truck it was replaced with a massive Oldsmobile-something my dad gave me, large enough to house a family of four and their horses. That one lasted a year after several mechanics assured me it was on its last legs, and then only because I was waiting to turn onto my parents’ street in Ormond Beach and a distracted guy in a truck carrying 1,000 lbs of salt blocks plowed into me at full speed. (I drove home anyway; his truck was totaled. Buy American!)

(Although that was beaten by my wife’s car, an ’83 Cadillac DeVille, which was once lightly rear-ended at a stoplight in DeLand and we didn’t notice. When the frantic woman behind us came up to knock on our window and make sure no one had been killed we just thought she wanted a dollar.)

My ’80 Chevy Malibu survived catching on fire on I-4 (even after the flames leaped out from under the hood, still we heroically went back to rescue the cassettes) and losing most of its suspension system to the point where I started keeping bus money on me since it was obvious I could become a pedestrian at any moment. It died a peaceful death, and I moved on with my life.

My ’76 Toyota Corolla dropped at just under 200k, and the car I was driving until last week, a ’92 Toyota Tercel, crossed the 205k mark — the last 5,000 miles on 2 and ½ cylinders — and my brother-in-law plans to get it running again anyway just out of dogged persistence.

There are certain techniques to this style of car-wringing – buy from someone you trust, pay in full, oil everything religiously, and most importantly, give up on keeping your car showroom-fresh. I’ll keep the interior clean because that’s the part I see, and I’ll keep the engine clean and lubricated because that’s what keeps me from walking, but I prefer my cars to look a little junky outside. I don’t need to pick up women and who cares what other drivers think? My cars run forever and never get broken into or stolen. My ideal car would be a Lexus interior stuffed into a heap of rust.

So now I’m off to begin running my “new” car into the ground. Judging from experience, it should take me another six or seven years, so I’d better get started. These things don’t abuse themselves, you know…

Oh, wait, they're serious.

Next month Volvo will debut their new concept car (industry term meaning "car we'll never actually make but isn't it cool?") designed for and by women, a small and neglected demographic of car buyers that barely makes up half of the world's population. So what do women drivers want?

Easy to clean interiors, intelligently-designed folding rear seats, a race-car-style fuel tank that doesn't use a gas cap, parking-space sensors that tell you if you can fit into a given spot, and plenty of smart and sensible safety features. What'll those wacky chicks think of next?

What got my attention was the lack of a hood, something I'd never before considered to be an optional extra. Apparently women don't want to be bothered with maintenance of any sort so the car keeps track of its own servicing and actually places a wireless call to a local service station when necessary. I'm sure the car monitors weekend sales and compares oil change coupons before it calls, too.

This, to me, is blatantly sexist. I'm just as technically hopeless as any woman, and more than most.

I can operate a car key, inflate tires, and buy gas. I can even add windshield wiper fluid if someone helps me with the funnel. My patented car repair technique requires a stereo that's louder than whatever engine component is about to burst or fall off.

Fortunately I have a brother-in-law who's good with cars and is the finest, smartest, most handsome person I know. This lets me keep my unshakeable, nearly religious belief that once a car is running it should run forever without further attention from me, a belief that began with my first car: a 1982 Chevette that ran for years without any input whatsoever.

My friend Dan experienced this one day after I stopped to buy oil because the little dashboard light wouldn't go off, even when I turned real fast. I checked the oil manually, just to humor him. "See?" I said. "Empty. I'll go–"

"You didn't do that right," said Dan, automotive expert. He checked it himself and we both listened to the sucking sound of my engine frantically trying to draw moisture out of the steel dipstick. There followed a communications breakdown familiar to mechanics the world over.

"Chris, there's no oil in your car."

"I know, that's why I have to buy–"

"Chris!" he said, slowly and carefully, the way you talk someone off a ledge. "There's no oil, in your car!"

"I know," I explained just as slowly. "That's why I–"

"Cars don't go without oil! They don't! They freeze up and die! Or explode!" The fact that my car continued to operate anyway clearly offended Dan, like a NASA scientist who'd just discovered all the stars were just painted on. Meanwhile I put a quart in to make the light go off. Silly Dan. Next he'd tell me cars needed water or something.

He paid attention for the next few months, watching my car thrive without fluids of any kind, and then he borrowed it and drove around the block over and over just to make sure it was capable of running out of gas. It finally sputtered after the needle was buried an inch below the "E," but I'm convinced the car only stopped to make Dan feel better.

Since then no other car has met my expectations, until now. So I think the new Volvo should be marketed to all incompetent drivers, not just women.

Just make sure that when it needs servicing, I can set it to call my brother-in-law.

Sure I enjoy it. Don't you? Heavy traffic means lots of cars and bored drivers, and that means nonstop entertainment that's better than any concert and wilder than the MTV Music Awards. And it's free! All you need is a steady driving hand and good eyesight.

Ahead of me this morning was an SUV featuring a live performance of Pink's 'Get The Party Started' by three teenage girls in the back seat. Just before the rest stop I was passed by a carload of business-suited pseudo-rappers. Behind me on Nova Road I could see a middle-aged man singing lustily along with Tina Turner (easily identified by the head-snapping motions). And the only thing separating a wildly gyrating soccer mom I saw yesterday morning and the Billboard Top 50 was actual talent.

There's just something about singing in the car that rivals the shower for acoustics and comfort levels. When you're stuck in traffic a car stereo is a private karaoke party, and the miles just zip past while you try to remember the third verse of 'American Pie.'

People in their own cars rarely realize that other motorists can see them so clearly. It's an unwritten law that no one looks at each other, from the same book that tells you to never, ever make eye contact with other people in a public bathroom, even if it's a fireman trying to get you out. Each car, van, truck, and bus on the road is full of motorists secure in their own space, comfortable in the sure knowledge that no one would ever peer at them.

Except, of course, for me.

And they're fantastic. Every car is like a bootleg music video. Drivers barrel down the highway with their music cranked up loud and they are, almost to a car, getting seriously jiggy. They sing. They dance. They pound the steering wheel. A few look as if they'd be stage diving if they weren't buckled in.

Granted, sometimes the drivers are on their cell phones or chowing down on a sausage biscuit. I treat those cars like commercials, little breaks in the show that display goods and services I might enjoy. Occasionally I might see a public service announcement such as the guy in the black Honda Accord that sails past me every morning while doing a crossword puzzle, a sight that serves as a valuable reminder for driving safety.

Occasionally one of the artists will notice me and clam up fast. They might glare once or twice, but mostly they stare straight ahead and speed up to get to a comfort zone where they can start singing again. Prima donnas, I call 'em. If the Internet has taught us anything it's that music is meant to be shared. This is why I don't like sunshades, window tinting, or those big rear window grilles, they make me feel like I'm sitting behind the pole at a concert.

My absolute favorites are the performers that are listening to the same radio station I am. Then I'm front row, with my own radio turned up full blast, hooting and screaming at the stage (i.e. the other car) as they gyrate. If I really enjoyed the song I'll turn on my blinkers and yell for more.

During slow songs I'll even perform a duet, singing soulfully in harmony, probably, with my unsuspecting roadmate. It does feel a bit creepy singing a love song with someone who doesn't know you're there and would be speed-dialing 911 if they did, but I just tell myself that we're in separate studios.

So drive carefully, everyone, and smile. It's showtime. I'll be the one practicing my Tina Turner impersonation.